I was really shocked by the International Cricket Council (ICC)’s Chief Executive Haroon Lorgat’s response on The Sunday Times story that the Cricket World Cup 2011 semi-final between India and Pakistan was fixed (India won that crucial match by 29 runs).
The Sunday Times article made claims over the activities of Delhi based illegal bookkeepers which might have directly influenced the outcome of the match. Haroon rubbished the report as baseless and misleading while thundering that the ICC has no reason to suspect anything wrong in the match.
Why such a haste to deny the report unless there was something really ‘fixed’ of which only the ICC is aware of, that’ why the ICC is so sure to rubbish the report.
I think the ICC needs to come clean on such a hasty and angry reaction. Or maybe it’s a typical response reserved for certain favourite countries!
MASOOD KHAN
Jubail, Saudi Arabia
